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Claim Evidence Reasoning

During the first month of class I really worked hard with my students to teach the scientific method, inductive, and deductive reasoning.  About 1/3 just don't get it and that has really bothered me.  I was wondering what to do to help them when I discovered this morning while talking to a colleague (we both get to school about 90 minutes early each day) that all my students have been taught to think in terms of Claim, Evidence, Reasoning!   All that is is looking at the scientific method and deductive reasoning from the other side of the process.  Whereas the premise+premise=conclusion and  phenomenon-->hypothesis-->experiment-->theory steps take the scientist from virgin observation of nature through to a published journal article, the CER process gives the science student a system for evaluating the published work of scientists, including movies I might show in class and their own textbook!  So that is what we started doing today.  MUCH FUN!!!  I hope this helps me reach the 1/3 who never quite understood my lessons on Aristotle deducing the sphericity of the earth.

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